プライベートツアー： ガルニ寺院、ゲーガルド修道院＆シンフォニー・オブ・ストーンズ

We travelled to Armenia as a church group of around 50 people, accompanied by our priest, and unfortunately our experience with Hala Armenia was very disappointing. We were surprised to have three people assigned to our group, but their roles and contribution were not clear. Ara, the main tour guide, did not provide the level of historical and cultural explanation we expected from a professional guide. His explanations were often limited, and on some occasions his manner towards members of the group came across as unwelcoming. There was also a lady, Batoul, whose role was apparently to provide “entertainment”. We had never experienced a group tour of around 50 people having a separate person in this role. Unfortunately, rather than adding value to the trip, we felt that her main involvement was in recommending particular restaurants and places to shop. We later checked and compared these places ourselves online and were disappointed to discover that some of the recommendations were not particularly good choices. This left us feeling that commercial considerations may have influenced some of the recommendations. The third person accompanying us did not appear to have any clear or useful role during the tour. Another major problem was the coach. The original coach was already very old. When it broke down, the replacement coach provided was, in our view, even worse. The breakdown and replacement caused us to lose a significant part of one of our touring days and negatively affected the whole group’s experience. We were also frustrated by decisions sometimes being made by the organisers without proper explanation to the group, and on some occasions without even informing our group leader. This created unnecessary confusion and frustration among the participants. Our group respected our priest and therefore generally left him to deal with these situations on our behalf. We appreciate that organising a large group of 50 people is not easy, and we understand that unexpected problems can happen. However, the combination of poor guiding, unclear roles, questionable recommendations, inadequate transport and poor communication made this trip much less enjoyable than we had expected. I am writing this review not to be unfair to anyone, but to give future travellers and church groups an honest account of our experience. If you are considering using Hala Armenia for a large organised group, I would strongly recommend clarifying in advance who will be responsible for guiding, transport, restaurants, shopping recommendations and communication with your group leader, and ensuring that these arrangements are clearly agreed before the trip.

Most liked the natural stones in the gorge and the monastery experience was very unique. They treated me very well and very professional, very safe to deal with them.